


feel it when my heart beats

by queenwithoutacrown



Category: The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-06
Updated: 2018-02-06
Packaged: 2019-03-14 17:53:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13595268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenwithoutacrown/pseuds/queenwithoutacrown
Summary: When he says, "You're still all heart, huh," Karen needs to look away for just a moment, because it hits just a little too close to home for comfort.(johnnyswiminthekastle week - day 6: heart beats)





	feel it when my heart beats

_you're still all heart, huh?_

 

 

-

 

 

There's an ordinary five line stave on the inside of his right arm. Maria's got a bunch of notes peppered at the same place on her arm. It fits, not even surprisingly so.

Soulmate marks are nothing he'd ever consciously thought about in his youth. He had one, great, he doesn't care. It's guess work at best. Some people have the same one, some people have matching ones, like him and Maria.

It's all a matter of interpretation.

The mark doesn't fade after she dies.

When he grazes his fingertips over it, he can still hear the song he played on the guitar the day he met her, feels the sun and smells the grass. Over and over and over again.

Bullshit, all of it.

He finds a semblance of comfort in it regardless.

 

 

-

 

 

Kevin's mark had been a diamond shape in the hollow of his throat. It had been a hit with his friends, with the girls. He's always blushed when they whispered about it, but secretly he'd enjoyed the attention. He had died far too young to ever try to find who else might have the matching one.

With the rise of social media the search gets so much easier. People just post theirs and let the internet do the thing. It's a small world. Many don't realize that it also broadens the pool of candidates. But they say love is blind, love is hopeful.

Karen never does.

Her parents are soulmates and she doesn't know a married couple unhappier than them.

As a small child hers had grossed her out, she must admit. The little girl she'd been once had dotted her i's with hearts. It had been difficult to accept that the crude form on the left side of her ribcage was meant to be the same actually, was an organ beating inside her chest.

She had been awfully jealous of that one girl in her class that had had the shape of a symbolic heart on her wrist. Essentially the same, but not at all.

Biology lessons and growing up cure her of both jealousy and disgust eventually.

Finding her soulmate is still not on her bucket list.

 

 

-

 

 

When he says, _"You're still all heart, huh,"_ Karen needs to look away for just a moment, because it hits just a little too close to home for comfort.

 

 

-

 

 

It's a pulsing sensation somewhere along his spine, between his shoulder blades.

A heartbeat, but not his own. Out of sync, out of breath.

Frank scratches over his neck, to somehow get rid of the feeling. It messes with his concentration, with his attention.

He doesn't think much about it.

That is until one of the kinder nurses at the hospital remarks on it.

At first he thinks it's another bruise, before discerning it for the human heart it is.

He doesn't know when the mark has appeared on his body. It's not on a prominent body part, not very visible. And he hasn't spent much time checking out his body in a mirror, so it's definitely a surprise.

Frank shoves it far away from him, disregarding it as a glitch in the fucking system. He doesn't care about shit like this anymore. If he has another soulmate they are better off without him.

He can live without the distraction.

 

 

-

 

 

Whenever she feels the city taking over control of her mind, her body, her sanity, Karen concentrates on the heartbeat of her mark.

The sensation is newer as far as she can tell.

She doesn't remember ever feeling a second heartbeat in addition to her own in her childhood, her teen years, even her early time in New York. Only later had the heart on her skin developed a life on its own.

Though she wouldn't admit it even during torture, Karen has read up on the meaning of the sensations that come with the soulmate marks. They are different for every couple. Experts are unsure, but the consensus in the scientific community is that it means closeness, a growing bond, the immediate meeting of soulmates.

For a short amount of time she thinks it might be Matt, but his mark is so vastly different from hers she discards the idea just as quickly once she's seen it.

She knows for a fact that it's not Frank, who has a different one on his arm.

Anything else is just like playing a very weird and uncomfortable game of 'Where's Waldo' so she lets it go.

Her principle of not caring about her mark has served her well enough in the past years, no need to change a winning team now.

 

 

-

 

 

 _"You're still all heart, huh?"_ he says and she invites him to her apartment to prove just how perfectly spot on his observation is.

 

 

-

 

 

After everything is over, spending time together is his idea, going out for runs together is hers.

"I need to focus my energy into something tangible," she tells him and he's right there with her. They've got a lot of restless energy between the two of them, sparking like lightning in a thunder storm.

And if it helps him to sleep easier at night because exhaustion is superior to insomnia and if the same reasoning holds true for her, then maybe it's for the best. They both have monsters sleeping under their beds, inside their minds.

They run often; he enjoys the companionable silence and the easy smiles, the physical action and the steady rhythm.

The coffee in her apartment afterwards he enjoys as well.

"Help yourself," Karen says. She shakes her head out of her ponytail and takes off her sweaty shirt. Seeing her in a sports bra makes him endlessly grateful for the loose sweat pants he's chosen to wear.

A dark spot on her ribcage catches his attention and Frank almost breaks the coffee mug when it hits him like a brick to the head.

It's a hyper-realistic image of a heart and if it wasn't looking exactly like his own he'd have mistaken it for a tattoo.

A human heart, anatomically correct and shit.

_Shit._

Karen puts on a fresh shirt and suddenly it's gone again. The loss of sight feels like a gust of cold wind, sticking his hands into freezing snow.

Nobody's lucky enough to have a second soulmate, though there are rumours of it happening. Correction then, nobody's lucky enough to meet both their soulmates in a singe lifetime and least of all him.

Out of all people in the world, it had to be her.

It makes perfect sense, of course.

For a terrifying second Frank wonders if Karen already knows that he has the matching mark, before his rationality takes over. She has never seen him without a shirt. She has never seen the heart on his skin.

But she does know about the lines on his arm, his other mark. There's no reason for her to assume he's got another one.

That he has one that belongs to her.

Briefly he wonders if it might bother her that he's got two, but he scraps that thought again before it's even fully fleshed out.

Not telling her about it crosses his mind immediately. Bolt and never come back flashes up like a bright neon sign in the dark. It would be better for both of them. Easier.

But this is Karen.

This is him and Karen and they both value honesty and it would be entirely unfair to withhold this from her. Selfishly he also doesn't want to leave her, doesn't want to think about a future where she never gets to see his mark.

In the end Frank manages to keep it to himself for a week, which is considerably longer than he thought he'd last.

 

 

-

 

 

She's racking her brain on what she's done wrong to spook him.

Frank is even more quiet than usual.

Because usually it's mutual, natural. Usually they don't need words to communicate. Usually he doesn't look away whenever gaze lands on him for longer than a millisecond.

"What's wrong?" she finally asks when he hasn't looked at her for the entirety of their jog together and not for the cool down walk up to her flat. Sure, the park isn't ugly to look at, but she hopes she has a little more to offer to him.

Frank sits down where he stands, right in the middle of her apartment.

"Would you like to know?" he asks in return, stops, thinks again. He's looking up at her. "Who has your mark, who is your other half?" His eyes burn through her at the question.

Karen is taken aback by the topic he raises. It's never been a concern between them before. She sits down next to him and leans her back against the kitchen counter.

"I never went looking. Why?"

Frank taps a rhythm against the hardwood floor. "I've seen your mark. Last week."

"Oh, okay." She's confused to be honest. She doesn't exactly flaunt it to the world, but she's also not covering it up on purpose. It just comes with the position on her body. Her clothing style usually isn't that revealing.

"You've got a problem with it?" she asks, half joking, half earnest. She has had dates with men who asked about her mark before the waiter even brought the menu. It's a turnoff, for her.

She just can't imagine Frank to be hung up about it. His mark's not a secret, not with that size and placement.

He turns his head to her and his eyes are slowly losing the haunted expression. "No, 'course not."

Karen laughs then. "You gotta explain where that comes from."

His answer is silence, the kind he specializes in. The rustling of clothes disturbs it. He's forcing his way out of his shirt, bunching the fabric in his hands. His gaze falls to his thighs.

All of his body, it's a piece of work if she's honest. He's got more scars than any living person should have. They are new and pink and uneven, some are white and faded and barely a memory. None of them are fresh and there are no recent bruises, much to her relief.

Except there's one spot on his back and it looks-

She reaches out without consciously thinking about it. Her finger traces the outline of the heart, the blood vessels, all of it. With her hand she travels up to his shoulders and downs his arms, pressing her fingers on his pulse point. The heartbeat she feels there matches the one she feels pulsing on her ribcage.

It's her mark, it's the same, it's impossible.

The five horizontal lines on his forearm aren't a hallucination, they are real. But the heart on his back, right above his actual heart, is just as real.

What she finds in his eyes is an unnameable emotion, impossible to define.

"Okay?"

Even she can make out the question mark at the end of the word, but there's just no other way to phrase it. Karen's got to make sure he's okay with this. She doesn't know what she thinks about it herself, other than it makes absolute sense.

"Yeah, uh, yeah. For you too?"

She slips her hand from his wrist into his calloused one, squeezes down hard, reassuringly.

 

 

_

 

 

They've got a shitton of question about this and no answers, nowhere to look for either, because every single person in the world is just as clueless as them.

Not that it would matter in any way, they've always unearthed their own truth. Frank will take this sign and just run with it, just as they've always done.

 

 

-

 

 

" _Still all heart, huh,_ " he says and kisses the mark on her skin, his warm breath ghosting over her ribs.

She lightly scratches over his. "Likewise."

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoy this one. Thank you for reading and for your continuous support. You rock, all of you <3


End file.
